Turning a Podcast into a Thriving Business w/ Jonny Nastor - EP 86
I've been listening to Jonny Naster's podcast for years. I remember I would get in my car in the mornings and drive down Palmetto Park to our office and visualize getting to the level that he was at.
Jonny is truly a pioneer in the podcasting space. He has interviewed the who's who in entrepreneurship and has created a thriving brand and a successful business around his podcast.
It was a real honor and privilege to talk to Jonny, and I am grateful that he shared some of his nuggets of wisdom with me and you all.
Enjoy the episode, I know you will love it!
In this episode, we talk about...
How Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas forced Jonny into creating a podcast.
How his show has evolved and why it has been so successful.
Jonny's transition from selling products to turning his brand into an agency.
What you can do to start and grow your podcast right now.
Show Notes
Hacktheentrepreneur.com - Jonny's website
The Showrunner - A podcast about creating better podcasts
Transcription
Tim:
All right, brother. Are you ready to do this?
Jonny:
Absolutely.
Tim:
Hey Jonny, thank you so much for joining me on my show. I really appreciate your time.
Jonny:
Hey, my pleasure, Tim. Thanks for having me on.
Tim:
Great. So we're going to jump right into this. I have been following your podcast for years. I don't even know how long. In my view at least, I'm sure there's others that have come before you obviously, but you really in the entrepreneurial space, I consider really one of the pioneers on using audio content, on using podcasting, on using interviews to grow your own brand, your own personal brand more probably closely defines it, and I'm really curious as to discover where the catalyst for this was, for being such an early adopter of podcasting. When was the moment where you decided that I'm going to do this? Did you hear somebody else do it and pull some inspiration from it or was it just sort of something that you felt more comfortable doing yourself?
Jonny:
I was forced into it too.
Tim:
Okay. I'm sure there's a story.
Jonny:
I started, I think it's like five and a half years ago now, I want to say which is kind of insane. Actually, right around now. It was like late February, early March. My family and I we were just wrapping up two months in Asia. We were just on vacation there and it wrapped up with this tiny little gathering. It was a conference I guess that is now hundreds of people and in a different country, but Chris Ducker had his first tropical think tank and there was 20 of us I believe with the speakers. And so I went to that.
In that, we had like a mastermind day so we sat at tables with different people and I was just stuck. I was selling software at the time and it was fun. I got to travel and saw stuff, but I kind of wanted to like get out there. I was like behind the scenes. I was like the marketing guy selling software and I just kind of wanted to do something different. I wanted a new challenge I guess. I got kind of bored of doing what I was doing, and it happens the Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas were both there.
And so both of them, when they heard this, they both are like, "You have to start a podcast," and I was like, "I don't. Absolutely not. I hate the sound of my voice and I've never interviewed anybody in my life so let's talk about something else." And they just kept on me. My daughter who was, I think seven at the time, her and Pat and her and John actually both headed off, and we were there for like a week together in this resort, all of us. So her and Pat ended up talking a whole bunch. So Pat actually ended up getting our address and sent us the podcast gear that I'm actually talking on right now for her and I to start podcasts when we got home.
Tim:
Wow.
Jonny:
So when we got home, this was sitting on the doorstep and then I just like put it aside for like three or four months and then just during the summer I was just like, "Screw it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to give you 30 people, that I want to talk to really badly and I'm just going to go continue on with software. But it kind of didn't work out that way. Now, here we are five and half years later.
Tim:
Okay. I have to take a second to deviate a little bit because I want to keep rolling with that but you said something in there that I really relate to, and you kind of smoothed over it, but you said it you hate the sound of your voice. When I was growing up. I was in speech class for years and years and years. I couldn't say ours. I've trained myself pretty well to do it, but I would really, really struggle. For instance, if I want to say mirror, a thing that you look into, I'd say like Mira and I couldn't get it.
I think I've had some just weird fears and anxieties about speaking to people my whole life since then. So this whole exercise podcasting and talking to people has been almost just as much like a challenge for me. I still get really nervous when I'm about to interview people and when I'm about to talk to people. And it's been like a little bit conquering for me in a way to kind of step up to that. When you said you hate the sound of your voice is that just something... I guess what I'm asking is, was that a legitimate fear that you went into with it or was that just sort of something that you like, "Nah. I don't really want to do it. I don't like the sound of my voice." Did it affect you or was it fleeting?
Jonny:
No. It was a legitimate fear. I mean, listen to the sound of my voice. So Tim, I've since realized, I mean I went into the whole showrunner thing with, you know. I did all that and so-
Tim:
With that guy?
Jonny:
With the other guy. So doing that and helping other people start podcasts, I've now realized that this is like 100% natural. It's actually scientifically proven why we don't like the sound of own voice because it reverberates something differently obviously within our own heads. And so the way we hear ourselves talking is different when we hear it played back and we don't get that with other people because we only hear it played back to us sort of. And so that totally makes sense now, but at the time, it's funny because I also had this ingrained feeling or thought that I also couldn't write when I started. I just wasn't a writer.
I'd been told by my teachers all my life like, "You don't know your grammar. This isn't for you," kind of thing. I was totally convinced of that and that was fine, but with the voice, I'm in bands. I've been in bands my whole life. I play drums. But every once in a while there'd be something where even if we're like in a studio recording and I do a drum track and then I talk afterwards and that gets played back to me while we're like mixing it before they cut it out, it's like, "Oh my god, I hate that. It was weird. It had been something I had heard my voice a fair amount of times that I was really just put off by it and that really had me convinced that I couldn't or I wouldn't be able to do it and I shouldn't do it because people on podcast typically sound good.
Tim:
Absolutely. And I guess it's just so interesting to hear that because I remember driving into my office every morning and I would put your show on and I would just think to myself, "Man, he must have been doing this forever you." The show is so natural and seem like you had your questions lined up. And so I guess hearing it from talk about how you had these fears and these insecurities about doing a podcast and on my end it's like, "Wow, this guy's a real pro." Isn't it always that way where it's like, "No, I'm just a guy just like everybody else and everybody has to kind of face these hurdles when they start these challenges?"
Jonny:
Yeah. I wouldn't call myself a pro now, but I mean it could be debated whether I'm more into the realm of a, quote-unquote, "pro" at it, because I myself with Hack the Entrepreneur, I've recorded almost 500 episodes at this point. I've been doing it a lot. So not that I'm a pro, but I mean I'm getting close to that 10,000 high remark if that's what it takes. But you're absolutely right in the fact that, yeah, we're talking five and a half years later. So it's easy for me to say that and we always get this assumption that when we're talking to people who have been doing something for a long time or they have a huge audience or whatever it happens to be, it's like they've always done that like I was somehow born in podcasting which doesn't make any sense. I was freaked out by it like absolutely just terrified when I started.
But also Tim, I do have to say that I think that... Looking back, a reason why my show kind of worked in the way that it did, and maybe why it could have came across as somewhat natural, even though I was terrified and I'd never anybody? I'm truly, truly, truly fascinated by the conversations, and I was so excited and so ready to do those 30 people. I just immediately wrote down this list of I want to talk to these 30 people. I've always wanted to talk to these 30 people. I just want to talk to them about business. I want to talk to them about creating stuff and about living this life the way they do it and why the hell they choose to do that.
It was like me getting to sit down with really, really smart people that I want to talk to you and just have a really cool conversation. The reason I got to do it was because I was hitting record to put it on a podcast that hadn't even launched yet by the time I finished interviewing all those people. So to me that part is natural. I didn't just try and find a market that I could be part of. I truly, truly was fascinated. It was either going to be these business conversations or I was going to talk like punk rock or something with people, because of the two things that I'm truly fascinated about and I can sit down and chat about.
Tim:
Well, who were some of those people? What are some of the more memorable interviews that you did?
Jonny:
Some of the memorable interviews that I did? I wish I had this original list. I mean, if I went back now, it's been a long time. I know Chris Brogan was my very first interview and he was also the first episode I put out.
Tim:
Wow.
Jonny:
And I'm terrible, I'm terrible at it. It's there. It's on my website. You can go listen to it if you want. It's really bad. I'm trying to think. Oh, what's his name? He created Breather now. Actually, he wrote books, two books with Chris Brogan. Julien Smith. And he had also co-written a book with Seth Godin at that time like a little pamphlet book. He's a Canadian guy, and he was like my second interview. So there was those ones I guess. And then I'm trying to think. Brian Clark was actually one of my first 30 that was on the list, although actually I didn't... That was a lie.
Actually, I recorded 20 of those 30 before we launched. Brian actually didn't get on to the show for like seven or eight months for some reason. It was some weird miscommunication. And then Seth Godin was on that original list, I didn't get him I think until about one year in or so, which was cool because he responded the first time like instantly to my email and he was just like, "That sounds awesome, man. How about get back to me when you hit episode 50 or something." Which I'm like at the time was like, "What?" Now, it's like totally makes sense because most people don't get that far. So he was kind of like put in some work and so I did.
When I got back to him, I was like, "Hey, man. I'd like you to be episode number, whatever." He was like, "Yeah, absolutely," and we did it. So it's hard to remember all the other ones. But they're there. I did actually talk to all of them at this point so it's pretty cool.
Tim:
That is really cool. Okay. So I'm going to backtrack a little bit back to the think tank conference and you talked to Pat Flynn and you talk to John. You had this moment where you said, "I'm going to go ahead and do this." But what I've always been curious about is when did you decide to make Hack the Entrepreneur its own brand with its own products? I guess I just assumed that that was always the case, but when I was speaking to you, you had mentioned that you were still selling software and they were kind of on two separate lanes. Was there a moment when you decided that I'm all in on this. I'm all in on creating my own brand and building an audience and trying to make a business out of it?
Jonny:
Yes. It was about 90 days after launching. I think I launched like September 5th or something. For some reason, I remember that date being the one. Again, this was five and a half years ago. The podcasting world was a different space. The competition wasn't nearly as fierce. There was a lot of people coming on to listen and not a lot of people yet creating stuff. So you could kind of take off.
The first month I launched, I think it had like 3,000 downloads or something. I was like, "Whoa, that's awesome. So cool." Next month was like 30-something thousand. I was like, "Oh, geez." And then it went like up to, I think it was like 80,000 or something. And it was like, "What?" At the time, Tim. I was living in a city called Thunder Bay like a little tiny isolated place that has like 90,000 population. I was like, "Wow, this is almost the same amount of people that live in this damn town that I'm reaching in a month from absolutely nothing. Nobody knew who I was.
I thought that was pretty cool, and so it came to this point, it was right there at the end of that third month where I just... I went for a walk and I was like, "Okay, this seems like one of those sort of forks in the road. I'm absolutely of the mind and of the thinking that I know I regret or I'll regret not doing things more than I'll regret doing them." I don't want to look back and be like, "Whoa, how far could I have pushed that?" And so I was like, "Here it goes. I'm going to do it." One year I'll give myself and I'll see. If I'm still digging it and still going well at the end of one year, then cool.
And so I got rid of the software. I got out of that business and just went full into Hack the Entrepreneur. Then it was sort of like right after that then I started writing for entrepreneur.com. And all these things sort of started happening then I got like hooked up with Copyblogger doing things and it just sort of kept going and so I just kept pushing it. I was doing three episodes a week at that point as well because sponsorships had already come in. I believe it was like sometime in the middle of the second month FreshBooks reached out to me and just started sponsoring. They sponsored me for years.
Actually, they just started this year again which is really cool sponsoring. It was just one of those points, Tim and I just decided that I didn't want to have to look back and be like, "I wonder if I could have pushed that any further?" I knew I could have pushed it a little bit further but I didn't know how far. So I just decided, "Let's try it out and let's just see where this can go." I still didn't know anything about content marketing. I didn't even know that's what I was doing at the time.
It was just this whole thing of figuring out... I mean, I knew how to market stuff and I mean there was sort of marketing think obviously put in my show. I tried to find a gap in the marketplace that was there so I knew where it could be. The whole mindset thing wasn't really covered in podcasts at that point, it was all tactics, and so I was like tactics are cool but I want to know why people are doing this like they're thinking behind it. So I filled that gap. Now, there's a ton of shows like that on, which there should be. So it was accidental yet at the same time deliberate in a sense that I did choose to do it at that fork as I sort of visualized it. There was no sort of like, "Here's my grand plan of all of this," it just sort of kept rolling and snowballing.
Tim:
I love how you just mentioned that you wanted to get involved with the thinking of it because I guess I didn't even realize it at the time, but that really was like the gap that you filled. All of the podcasts were very instructional because it sounds so crazy to think, five and a half years ago, such a long time ago, but the whole podcast industry has had such a quick evolution that it's amazing to think that just five and a half years ago there weren't a whole lot of shows that had the format that yours do. Well, you actually try to get into the mindset and learn about the experience and learn about the journey and find that hack which you built your show around.
So that really was, whether you did it on purpose or accidental or maybe stumbled into it. I think that totally was the lane that you filled and I think that's probably why I gravitated towards your show so much as well. So on that note, we mentioned the evolution of podcasting and as somebody like yourself who's been in this for such an amount of time, what do you think... I'm going to leave this question really open-ended. How do you feel about this growth of podcasting. Do you see it as good for everybody? Do you see it is almost like unfortunate that there's such saturation in the audio market now that everybody can basically start a podcast and say something? What do you think the future of all of that is?
Jonny:
The future of it or what I think of it now?
Tim:
Well, I want to hear what you think of and now, but when I say the future, do you think it's a positive thing or do you think it's a negative thing?
Jonny:
So the way I see it, Tim is I see it as like pirate radio stations from the '80s and stuff that people... And I wasn't part of that, but I've read about it and things and it was really sort of fascinating. College radio was really big. If you had the gear, you could put out your stuff, you could put out your content, you could talk about what you wanted and you could share it, but you can only share it with a very, very specific geographic area. And to me podcasting is like that. So I'm absolutely for everybody having a show if they want one, absolutely.
Good shows, there still are going to be tons of good shows that just never get heard unfortunately and there's going to be a bunch of shows that are really big because that person was already popular which I see that sort of going more and more like that. It's just sort of extension of people's brands, and that's fine too. Because of the value of obviously audio content on demand like this, there are. There have been companies trying to come in and sort of lock things down and they'll keep trying I'm sure. I really hope that we can manage to fight it off because I think it's an essential medium.
I think that we've never had the potential like we do now. The fact where I could record in a basement of a house like literally in the middle of nowhere and reach people all over the world. It's taken my family around the world and stuff, this podcast at this point. That's insane. We can live wherever we want and we've moved several times since I've started it. To me that's fascinating and I hope that we never lose that and I hope that we actually continue lots of us to actually fight for that and to keep that freedom because it's super, super important to me.
And so this is like all aside from like a business sort of standpoint of podcasting obviously. This is like philosophically I feel like it is a really, really valuable and powerful medium that we should hold on to. And it's amazing because there really are no gatekeepers for it. I mean, you have iTunes and stuff but they're only distribution platforms. They don't even host your stuff so they're not really a gatekeeper, they just allow you to get found if you want. But really you don't even need to host it there if you didn't want to.
Anybody with any ideas, nobody can tell you what you can say, what you can't say, what you can do, what you can't do. That's pretty fascinating, pretty amazing. Again, not that everybody necessarily needs to start one, but the fact that anybody could at any point. Anybody listening right now could literally just press stop on this and go recording through their iPhone if they want to start making their own show. That's amazing. And I really, really truly hope that we continue to value that as, I guess, a society or as even just part of the podcasting movement if we...
Not the like capital podcast movement like that thing, just like us as like people as podcasters. I hope we do strive to keep it as free as possible and when these new apps come out with like VC capital behind them and they try and make it like membership-only and this is where things are going to be. "We're going to inject ads into your stuff." It's like, "No, we don't need that. It's not needed. It's absolutely not." Anybody at any point, we can reach anyone in the world ourselves. We don't need those kinds of things. We don't need this stuff to be locked down. The very nature of a podcast to me is free. It's just that's how it is. You need to monetize it in other ways. But it's not really to me a podcast if you're trying to lock it down in those ways.
Tim:
I totally agree, and you went to exactly where I was trying to lead you with that question where since it's getting big, bigger corporations are going to get involved but to me, the thing that I was loved about it, is exactly how you explained it. It's just this free platform where anybody and anybody can say anything and if they should or not isn't really up to me. I've been having this conversation with my father. My dad is a paramedic in Philly. He's been a Philly paramedic for like 20 years and he's obviously seeing some things and is getting involved with the mental health stuff with paramedics after all the stuff that they go through.
So I said, "Dad, just start recording stuff on your phone and start telling some of these stories then you could put it out on a podcast." And I think that particular example can be true for anybody regardless of what it is that they have to talk about. So I totally agree. All right. I want to transition a little bit more into some of the specifics of Hack the Entrepreneur and get a little bit more technical because over the last five and a half years, I've seen your brand evolve kind of two or three different times. There's two routes I want to take. The first is of just product development, I want to learn from my own curiosity because I'm pretty good at building brands, I'm pretty terrible at building products and so my first question is when did creating an actual product of your own become something that you decided to do and how did you decide on the products that you created?
Jonny:
That's a good question. So the first product I created, Tim was actually the Showrunner. The Showrunner Podcast and the Showrunner Podcasting Course, and that wasn't my idea. It's plainly put. That goes back to Brian Clark who you know and he was on my show as I said six or seven months into it. Literally, right as we hit stop on the record we kept talking. He said that they're coming out with this Rainmaker podcast network and he said it would be cool to have a show that isn't part like an in-house Copyblogger products. Would I like to have my show there? He's like, "Yeah, absolutely. Sounds awesome."
And then a week or so later, he just randomly messaged me and said, "Have you ever thought of creating a podcast about podcasting and maybe teaching people how to podcast?" I was like, "I've never thought of that, not once." And apparently Jared, and I guess there's been lots of questions by the Copyblogger community about podcasting and there was this sort of this plan with this Jared Morris guy who I failed to mention earlier. And so he was getting ready to sort of launch something and Brian literally just emailed the two of us together at one point. He's like, "Hey, I think you guys could do something really good together," and that was it.
We literally launched the podcast almost right away. They had sort of the branding already around it. We started talking about podcasting and as we were doing that, it was about a month and a half or so. We were creating the product and then we launched it. So I can't take credit for that one. I mean, I helped create... Well, obviously I helped create the product and mapped it out what we were going to create. But the idea and the market we were going to be serving was sort of there for me.
Then the next product that I actually created would have been my book, which just became... I just asked it over and over again like, "Do you have a book with all the hacks in them or something?" And so I decided to just put it together. So I got an editing team. We just started compiling things and then rather than just making it that, I decided to rewrite parts and turn it into a sort of five-step sort of book and then the whole process. And then that sold really, really, really well for me.
To me that just felt like a natural extension and not that that's necessarily how you should pick what products to sell. You don't always even get that, but in that case with the book, it seems so logical and people were just asking for it. Plus it's a really low price tag obviously so it's easy to sell, and that's what we did. And then there was just a whole marketing plan behind it and stuff.
Tim:
That's what I've been dying for is having everybody just tell me what it is that they want.
Jonny:
It's never happened to me again.
Tim:
No? Not once?
Jonny:
That's why I mean don't wait for that. I'm just saying somehow I got lucky and I don't want to be that guy on the show being like, "Yeah, just wait until everyone will start telling you." It's like, "No, it's never happen to me again in five years. It's just it happened once and I just ran with it." Also, it was sort of something I had been thinking about for a long time. Once, I was like yes, I'm going to do it. It was kind of like, "Okay, I'll do it. It was kind of like starting the podcast. I got all the gear but then I didn't actually start for like three months.
And then it was like I remember being like September, I got through the summer and then I was like, screw it. I hired somebody to do like the launch with me and we literally mapped it out and I was like December or whatever, or November or something. It's like we picked an exact date. I'm like I'm launching the book then. I hadn't even started writing it. So it was kind of like I forced myself within, I think it was six or seven weeks to actually create the entire book and then get it into the design phase. Because I knew I would just lose interest otherwise and stuff. Now, it makes sense perfectly but I wouldn't recommend anybody else waiting until people just sort of tell you.
Tim:
So then if you took an informal audience survey to create your first product and you said that, that hasn't happened again, what's been your process to develop your next products? Did you go into those a little bit more nervous that it wouldn't work? Did you still feel confident in that process of launching a product? Again, for myself for my own curiosity, that's always where I get stuck. I think, "Yeah, this could work, this could work, this could work," but actually focusing in on this is the direction that I'm going to take my brand. How have gone for that and said just like before, "Screw it. I'm going to go for this." What did that take?
Jonny:
More recently, I'm going to say it was probably a year and a half ago, this to me is a more scientific approach if you will, Tim, which is I now have a quiz on my site. You couldn't do it. It's sort of pops up, but it's advertised everywhere. It's like a free quiz just to figure out what kind of entrepreneur you are. Then people go through six questions I think or eight questions, and I get very specific answers about who they are, where they're at and what they want help with for me, because it literally is set up for that.
And so I just get 30, 40, 50 people a day filling this out and I can go in and look at the data from thousands of people now. I can see like, "Wow, 86% of the people are getting their first 100 customers or something." You know what I mean? And I know how old they are. I know what they do for a living now or if they're doing it full-time, all those kinds of things. And so it does make it a lot easier. To me, it's just an automated ongoing process of asking your customers what they want. And I really started to do that as like... I started focusing on SEO and so my audience started to change. The podcast doesn't drive my traffic anymore.
Tim:
Wow. I'm surprised to hear that.
Jonny:
It's completely overwhelmed by organic search. And so it was like I need to figure out who these people now that are finding me. Some of those people come in organically and then they listen to the podcast which is cool, but it's not the big push for traffic at this point. It just been overcome by that. And so I wanted to figure out who these new people are. And it's interesting. It helps us dictate like our editorial calendar and what we're going to write because we see sort of what articles are getting what people and then if we don't... It's like, it's not really the person I want to be working with. So we have to sort of direct our content around who it is we're trying to find.
Tim:
That's a perfect segue. I took, it's almost like a year maybe more than a year, to stop listening to business and entrepreneurship podcasts just because I felt like I was getting too wrapped up in it, and I decided to start again and the first show that I put on was your interview with Brian Dean from backlinko.com, and I have never asked you this directly. I mean, obviously this is the first time we're talking, but I saw an instant transition after that episode, and I think even the blog post you wrote around that article was really SEO'd really specific.
I'm going to get this wrong, but it was something like how to rank on the first page of Google with Brian Dean, and I always got the feeling that that experience was the next evolution in your brand when you saw this opportunity, you saw this new way of doing things and you decided to become a search expert and like, "Man, you really have positioned yourself that way." So a first question, "Am I completely making that up where that interview of Brian Dean was a launching point for you? And two, "How has this new search business going for you?"
Jonny:
So yes, that was a turning point. I mean, historically there's one or two articles before that, that we had been trying things with SEO in mind but still figuring it out. And then I happen to meet in Toronto here Brian and a month or so before that interview, and we just started talking and then came up with this idea to do that. So then I did keyword research, literally did keyword research to come up with the topic we were going to specifically cover and how we were going to cover it to go completely against how I said I just talked about like mindset and not tactics. That is a hundred percent tactics.
And I actually do, do those now more often because people do really like them as well. I mean, if you know, Brian and anybody listening, I mean if you read his stuff, he's not about mindset, this guy. He's about like, "Here's how to freaking do this." I mean here's specifically how to do it. So that's what I wanted from him. I mean it's transformed everything that I do, because I know how to do it now. I totally get SEO. It makes sense to me. This is, again, totally contradicting myself, Tim.
Now in SEO consultants, we have a team that does it for clients, and this was totally accidental. Building a team around and stuff was... Again, I sort of reached this point in a road, but taking on clients for SEO work literally just it happened over like a year and a half period, I guess it was, and it was just literally... I didn't have an offer, nothing for it and it was just like a listener would just like email me or reply, and like, "Do you help people do this sort of stuff?" And I just like, "No, I don't know, I don't know." And finally it was like, "Yeah, let's try it."
Then I would like do that for a few months and then all of a sudden, I'm going to take another client and it was like, "Oh, interesting." I believe it was December. Either December or November of last year." So just like a couple months ago that I actually put up an SEO offer for the first time ever on my site, telling people that I actually do it. So now we have seven clients I believe right now, which is what our limit is for the moment. And so it's going well. It's fun. So that was like the book I guess.
When I said like don't wait for that, it does happen sometimes too. I mean, you do need to be sort of be aware of it or be looking out for those things because sometimes it can just be like, "Oh, just whatever. Just say no to them." But then it's kind of like you don't pay attention to the pattern, but that pattern was there. And so I decided that ugh. Again in June of this year was when I actually put a team around it. I still didn't have that offer obviously, but I was like screw it. I'm going to actually hire some people. We're going to do this for real. I was like, "Let's just see where we can take this whole agency thing." More in like a, I guess, like a boutique sort of agency in the sense that we're not just taking in clients all the time. We basically just sort of open up windows every couple months to take in one or two clients at a time. But it's going well.
Tim:
I love that story. That's basically exactly how it happened to me. 10 years ago, I started blogging basically. My journey has a lot to do with getting involved in the addiction recovery space. And so I have a lot of content online around helping people that are struggling with some of those kind of things. And after doing it for three years, you start looking at how are people getting to my site. And then I just randomly found myself getting emails from businesses and in the healthcare space saying, "Hey, how did you build this brand? Hey, how are you driving this kind of search traffic?" And I very much like you, just sat back on my chair one day and I thought, "I wonder if I could specialize in this really, really..." I don't know if boutique is the word, but specific industry or vertical and that's how it started.
And then ever since for me, I've had such an appreciation for search for the science and even the problem-solving aspects of it because in SEO there's a really scientific specific follow these instructions and you'll do okay, but then when it comes to link building, there's really no manual. I mean, there's tips and tricks, but you have to kind of figure it out. You just have to go get these links somehow and that really appeals to the salesman side of me. I love it. I feel so lucky every day that I get to wake up and I just get to do work that I really, really love.
So I say that to sort of ask now that you've seen both sides of this, you've done the podcasting and you've done the product development, which I think traditionally is seen a little bit more of a scalable type business and now you're doing the more boutique agency client services things, which obviously can be just as profitable, if not more profitable, but it's like a different model. How would you compare these two? which one has made you happier? Which one makes you more excited and how is it all going?
Jonny:
That's a good question. So again, contradicting myself. Not from earlier in this conversation but in conversations I've had before. I said I would never get into something that wasn't like software or digital based.
Tim:
Wow, really?
Jonny:
Yeah, because I was just that's where I was in, and you're right. It's like it's almost infinitely scalable in an amazing way and that's really cool. But right now and for... Again, I don't even try and kid myself, Tim that I might be doing this in two years or three years or 10 years and I might be. But if I could be doing three other things and that's totally just sort of what I do, and that's totally cool too. I'm doing it until I don't want to do it anymore and I'm really, really, really digging it right now.
My clients are bloody amazing. I mean, the fact of picking clients the way we do and in a very small scale, it's like the relationship is really, really good. And we only work on like six-month contracts at a time. Two of the clients right now are on their third one of those. So it's amazing. It's really cool in that way. I'm really using it to learn SEO and to actually convince myself that I can do SEO in a vast array of markets. I mean to a certain degree, Tim, I mean I was lucky or blessed in the way with Hack the Entrepreneur. I've been doing it for years and I had a ton of back links.
I just didn't really know there was a value to them and I had just been writing things like people typically tend to do, just sort of writing a blog post as I felt inspired, I'll just write and put it out there, send my email list to it, was great. But once I started in paying attention to it and I like re-optimized my site and then I started putting out actual targeted content, it took off pretty quick because I kind of... I mean my site was already kind of old and it had a ton of backlinks.
So I wanted to be like, "Okay, cool. I want to now do this in completely different markets that I have no sort of position in to help me in that way. And so it's helped me a lot in that way. That being said, Tim, starting just actually this year, we're starting to build other sites in other markets ourselves basically with what we learn and we're just going to be building affiliate sites on the side until... And then in the next year, I would say, maybe year and a half those will just eclipse clients altogether and we'll just keep building those because I just know how to do it now.
It totally just makes sense to me SEO. I've done it in 10 different markets. It's completely random from each other and I've taken people from no organic traffic to just thousands and stuff. It's something that my brain... I've been trying to understand this myself. So that's why I'm trying to think about this. But I think it is just that sort of entrepreneur in me, Tim where I'm using this... I'm not using... Not in that way, but I'm using it as an education, I'm using it to build a team around it. I'm using it to learn a lot. I'm using it and I'm benefiting my clients.
And then it's going to definitely go into... Because it's just how I am. Once I know how to do it, I have a team around, it's like, "Why don't I just build my own sites?" You know what I mean? There's just all the different markets and we'll sell affiliate stuff, and it does. So we actually started our first one last month. Oh, actually we were going to... So in December, we had the team and we did a bunch of research brainstorming and we were going to pick our first market. We were starting January 3rd or whatever the first date back.
But then actually over the holidays, I got an offer from somebody to partner with them in a 50/50 way with a site that already exists, that's already doing really well and we're just shifting to a market that's sort of right beside it, and selling affiliate products. I know the market is really big because I just have seen his numbers of what he does. And so that's actually our first project for an affiliate site. And so rather than starting from scratch, we're doing that but we're going to be starting our first one from scratch next month in March. So that's kind of our plan.
Tim:
Yeah. That is so similar and I think that is so cool. I like agencies, because there's a very low barrier to entry. As soon as you have a client, you're technically an agency and if you can work your butt off and help somebody, I'm all for it. But basically exactly what you're doing is exactly what happened to us. It's almost like we serve our clients as well as we possibly can and we do a great job. And I would never take away from that, but it's almost like the team that you can build is this own little media/marketing engine within itself. So you might as well use this asset of skills and knowledge, and workforce, and camaraderie and apply it to things that you own.
So what we just did, I guess bragging on myself a little bit, we just launched this website called Moving Local and it's basically a huge directory of all the moving companies in the country and then it's a lead gen site because we know local search. So if we can gobble up all of these search terms for how do I move from Fort Lauderdale to Nashville or something like, you can take the phone calls and then sell it to like a moving broker. So that's just my own personal example of it sounds like the same exact methodology that you are applying to your own future and your own business. I really congratulate you on that. I'm just always a fan of when people take what they know and they build something for themselves around it, and that's what it sounds like you're doing.
Jonny:
So interestingly enough or not interesting, I'm not sure. It is to me. So the way I think about it, I mean it's exactly what you're doing. It totally makes sense, but actually the way I think about it, is my dad built houses. He was like a contractor, and so I kind of grew up in that space and a very, very common thing in the construction industry is that you typically always have a house you're building or a house that you're renovating to sell and flip. Because you have extra materials, you have guys who have like a day or two off here and you need to keep them employed anyways. You're paying them.
You can just sort of shift your resources over to this thing and it just sort of like maximizes your resources. Plus at the time, it makes you other income. And so to me, I literally just think of it that way. I was just like, "It's just SEO. I'm just building other people's sites. It's basically like that." I have this team so why don't we just also at the same time, always have these other projects so that when there are those afternoons that they just don't have something they want to work on or something they have to work on right now, it's kind of like, "Hey, go over here and hit the [inaudible 00:45:22] and just work on it." So yes, all I'm saying is I do come from the offline sort of business construction space in that way. So my framework for it is sort of just structured around that thinking.
Tim:
That's really cool. I cannot wait to see where it goes. I can't wait to see what it is that you launched, "Hey, Jonny. I really, really appreciated your time." It was great speaking to you. Before we wrap this up, I know that you mentioned some of these places, but make it official. Please tell everybody where they can find your website if you're ever on Twitter or if you have some contact information, where can people find you?
Jonny:
Absolutely. Hackentrepreneur.com, it's the site that we've been talking about. There's email lists there if you want. There's SEO services if you want. You can even go and track down... Actually possibly, it varies obviously. It's SEO. But you might be able to just Google depending where you are how to get on the first page of Google, in Google and you might see that article we're talking about. It's typically hovering around the first page if not on it. And then the only social media I use at this point is Twitter. So @jonnastor, J-O-N-N-A-S-T-O-R. I'm on there. Happy to chat, happy to talk, answer any questions you might have. That's about it, Tim.
Tim:
Sounds great, brother. I will be sure to put all those in the show notes. Hey, once again, I really appreciate your time. Just the last thing is me thanking you for all of your hard work. I really mean it where I said I've been listening to you. I'm a fan. And I know we talked about this in email, but years and years ago, I wrote that article about Steve Kamb from Nerd Fitness because you interviewed him and I sent it to you on Twitter, and I think you replied or something. You said, "This is a great article." I'm telling you, man, it was so long ago but it really, really made my day. I never forgot that.
Jonny:
Oh, wow.
Tim:
So just extending some gratitude for all that you've helped me. I really appreciate it.
Jonny:
You're very welcome, and thank you. I appreciate it too.
Tim:
Fantastic. All right, man. Well, we'll do this again soon. Talk to you later.
Jonny:
All right.